Brands have personalities ?!

According to O’Connell (2015) consumers view brands as living entities, where brands are been perceived by customers as either a masculine or a feminine brand. The author mentioned a study that was done on 130,000 German consumers found that branded products that are seen adventurous, aggressive, brave, where categorized by customers as masculine brands, where on the other hand, brands that reflected traits as fragile, graceful, sensitive were categorized as feminine brands. Companies intensively work to understand the minds of customers.
          Indeed the brand personality concept is very true, for instance few days back I was out with my mother and her hand bag captured my attention, I started checking out her hand bag and I really did not like the design of the bag, mom felt the dislike on my face and said: it is a Gucci bag. The moment I heard the name Gucci (a brand that I consider as sophisticated and lavish) my whole perception and look to the bag changed and I started loving the hand bag. This incident clearly reflects how customers associate traits to the various brand names in the market, where these attributes are usually stored in the minds of customers and triggered once they get exposed to a stimulus. Stimuli are those elements that evoke a set of feelings when customers get exposed to firms billboard adverts, TV commercial and brand logo (Solomon, 2012). Moreover in consumer behavior studies, it is claimed that customers learn and shape attitudes by responding to a stimulus which is created by companies. Many customers select to buy from brands that match and express their personalities, this proves that customers nowadays are victims of the various branding schemes done by large marketing corporations where the majority of the brand characters are been actually created by these entities (Aaker, 1997). Consumers should be very conscious towards the marketing efforts of firms to trigger their emotions at the time of making purchase decisions, alternatively customers should follow their intellectual power in making buying decisions.

References

Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347-356. Retrieved April 23, 2015, from http://ezproxy.squ.edu.om:2145/docview/235235096?accountid=27575

O’Connell, A. (2015) Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from                  https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-do-we-get-so-emotional-about-brands

Solomon, M. R. (2012). Consumer behavior: Buying, Having and being. United States of America: Pearson education.

Internet, a curse or a blessing for job opportunities?

The newly born infants of the 21st century, get their first exposure to the public through the Internet. Thanks to the social media networks and the abundance of cellular data connection in most parts of the world. Davidow (2015) argues that Internet has caused a loss in the number of jobs available in the market; as most firms are emerging to a more automated business conduct, where humans are displaced by robots. He claims that big companies such as Google are successful and profitable due to the drop of expenses caused by running firms with few workers. Davidow (2015) also added, online retailing has lead to a drop in the number of jobs offered in retail shops, as retailers are using machines instead of labor in their warehouses.
               In criticism to Davidow's explanation to the success reason of Google like companies, it is not due to the small number of employees' such firms are prospering, but it is about the productivity and efficiency of the employees' in such firms that leads to the success and revenue growth of these companies. Of course the employees' productivity is not the only factor of success, however the quality of employees' plays a very crucial role in the performance of a corporation (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart and Wright 2011).
        According to Thau (2013) 94% of retail sales are achieved from physical retail stores in the USA. This indicates that many customers in the states still prefer not to shop online and rather target brick-and-mortar merchants. As a result of the physical retailer shops demand, famous retail chains would expand further by opening more branches of their stores, and thus many job opportunities are retained in the retailing industry. Given the aforementioned justification, it is evident that Davidow's claim about jobs drop caused by online retailers is incomprehensive. In general the article would have been more valid if it contained more data about the claims made by the author. Moreover the author's over generalization of Internet impact to job opportunities is questionable.

References

Davidow, W. H. (2015) Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from                  https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-internet-has-been-a-colossal-economic-disappointment

Noe, R. A. , Hollenbeck, J. R. , Gerhart, B. , & Wright, P. M. , (2011). Fundamentals of human resource management. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Thau, B. (2013). Getting physical online retailer move offline. Chain Store Age, 89(3), 12-14,16. Retrieved April 13, 2015, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1400452493?accountid=27575

Self service kiosks and consumer behavior

Robotics and self service kiosks are repeatedly heard terms in today’s world. In her article Gavett (2015) points that many companies nowadays are emerging to offer their products on a self service machine due to the high returns of these electronic facilities. The reason behind the revenue growth is, self service kiosks or applications help to remove the physiological and social embarrassment that many customers try to avoid in their buying process. For instance, it is witnessed that consumers would order less food at a fast food restaurant as to avoid the people judgment on their eating behavior. In contrast when they ordered through a website, the quantity of the food is more and customer satisfaction is higher (Gavett, 2015). But the question is, why are customers caring so much about other people impressions and judgments towards their purchase behavior ?
           In answer to the above question, human beings define them self's by imagining how others would look at them, what impressions their appearances create to the people around them. Sociologist term the above as the "Looking glass self" concept (Sinigaglia & Rizzolatti, 2011). People absorb their personality traits from the culture they live in, the latest trends in the world and new fashion created by marketers. Where each person gets attracted to those traits that match their perceptions and norms. Then consumers illustrate the absorbed attributes by their purchasing behavior, taking into consideration the impressions that their purchases and belongings would create to the public (Solomon, 2012). For example when I went through the process of buying a new car, my main consideration was what will the car speak about my personality, what will the people comment at me when they will witness me riding that car. Thus the above explains why consumers are feeling more comfortable to buy through self service kiosks than to go through face-to-face interactions with shop sellers and appear to the public while buying.

References

Gavett, G. (2015). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2015/03/how-self-service-kiosks-are-changing-customer-behavior

Solomon, M. R. (2012). Consumer behavior: Buying, Having and being. United States of America: Pearson education.

Sinigaglia, C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2011). Through the looking glass: Self and others. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 64-74.  doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.11.01